I know, I know. I am not the measure of all things. There is much I don’t know… more than enough to make me blush. It is also true that I haven’t followed trends in poetry for a long, long while — not since William Carlos Williams — though I confess to reading some Robert Pinsky recently. Still, I desire to see words used to communicate… words that hint at a meaning and don’t require me to go after them as if I were a desert wanderer forced to turn over every rock in the hope of finding a hidden spring. I don’t mind being teased with a sylph-like thought that appears and disappears. But I know the difference between a tough crossword puzzle and an encrypted message from private thoughts.

(courtesy: wikipedia)

I came across a poem in the March edition of “Harper’s” which strikes me as being one of these encrypted messages. The poet, W.G. Sebald was a German scholar who, rumor had it, would have won the Nobel Prize for Literature if he hadn’t died in a car crash in 2001. A book of his work will be published by Random House in April and one of his poems, “Timetable,” appears below.

“Grown sheepish

by morning, I study

the grounds of my coffee

By midday I cut

a slice for myself

from the hollow pumpkin of summer

And not until dark do I risk again

the Cretan trick

of leaping between the horns”

Okay, I get the individual words… I even like the image “the hollow pumpkin of summer,” and the “horns” referred to are probably those of the moon’s phases. But when the words are strung out in a line, what do I get?

I get a headache. If anyone can decipher this poem, please share because,

Grown owlish

in the morning, I, too, study my coffee grounds

And not till dusk,

having sliced myself hollow with the doubt that I understand anything,

I can relate. When I came across the poem in Harper's I was pretty baffled.
I was initially frustrated because I didn't understand the last stanza about leaping through the horns, but after googling "Cretan trick and horns" I found that the expression "grabbing the bull by the horns" originates from a very serious game played by men on the isle of Crete in antiquity. You'd hop the fence, stalk past the grazing cows, and attempt to literally grab the bull by it's horns. Spectators would form a ring; it was very serious village entertainment, like modern day bullfighting, or even football. But the horn-grabber's mission was only a success if when the bull tried to shake him, he leaped (i.e. was flung) between it's horns.
It's a game where the stakes are on the one hand life and death. But, like bullfighting, it's more about the artistry, or the performance the individual leaper enacts that earns him or her glory. Death, in bullfighting, is either the ultimate form of glory or, if you're unskilled and die out of clumsiness or ignorance, an unpleasantly apt metaphor for being forgettable. In this respect, horn-leaping is a metaphor for writing poetry.
Sebald has grown sheepish by morning. Sheepish connoting shame and reluctance and shyness (almost failure) all at once. He is sheepish because he has failed in his art. How vain even to attempt? He stares at the grounds of his coffee: He's already drunk a stimulate and he's still sheepish. This is no passing mood of self-doubt. The poet takes stock of himself with wide-awake eyes. There is no certainty that his art is worth anything. There is certainty that he has failed in his quest for perfection. His sheepishness is deserved.
To at midday eat from the hollow pumpkin of summer is to eat something that's still along way from reaching ripeness or maturity, but to gather strength and sustenance from it nevertheless. To eat from the hollow pumpkin of summer is basically to tell yourself to relax. The poet accepts the impossibility of perfection. He will never not be a novice. The quest has no ending. Therefore, all he has are his attempts, his dogged perseverance. The poet is bolstering himself to attempt his art again. At task at which he knows he'll fail. Of course, if you go to grab a bull by its horns with fear or doubt in your heart, you'll spook him and be gored. To eat from the hollow pumpkin of summer is to clear oneself of any expectations, to focus solely on the animal before you, the snorting bull, the yet-unwritten poem.
By nighttime he is sufficiently emptied, sufficiently prepared to go out into the field (the field of play and of battle at once). He will attempt the Cretan trick, a trick making oneself vulnerable to death, to complete annhilation, for one moment of flight, of artistic grace.
The poem is about the daily experience of devoting your life to art. How much disappointment one must confront and be at peace with if the attempt is to result in human flight, however momentary.
That's basically what I think anyway. It's probably a bit adulatory but it's become an essential poem for me.

As promised, I’ve done a little reflecting on your comments about the poem by Sebold. And, as a cat may look at a king, so I dare to quibble with the merits of a poem written by a Nobel Laureate, though I appreciate your valiant attempt to show me its merits. In a nutshell, here is why I think the poem fails. The beauty of poetry, as I value it, is the ability to conjure a fresh, clear image which takes my breath away and gives me a new insight. Example: “Petals on a black, wet bow.” No head scratching required over this image. One sees it immediately but in Ezra Pound’s context a new dimension is added to my understanding.
My problem with Sebold’s poem is that it invites too many interpretations. Take the “hollow pumpkin” of summer, for example. You propose that it represents something that’s still a long way from ripeness or maturity but that “one gathers strength and sustenance from it nevertheless.” Your conclusion is that “the hollow pumpkin of summer is basically to tell yourself to relax” and to accept imperfection.
Let me play with another interpretation. A hollow pumpkin, having no seeds, represents impotency, unable to give life, just as the grounds of coffee represent a cup already drunk and empty. The Cretan trick is to face death. Perhaps this is a poem of despair. It doesn’t reflect Sebolds’ concern for the perfection of his poem but the concern of a man growing old, a man who doubts that poetry has given any meaning to his life. “Grown sheepish in the morning ”may not be about shyness. Perhaps it is an image of ignorant youth that fails to see that the grounds of the empty cup -- like the hollow pumpkin -- offers a truth only to be seen in old age. Time is the dominant element here, after all…its passing.
Okay, I admit, this isn’t a deeply studied response, but it may be valid enough to suggest my point – which is that Sebold’s poem reads like a Rorschach test. It invites too much personal meaning, allows the reader to impose rather than be guided to a point of revelation which the author and reader can share. There is no way to prevent a reader from bringing his or her experience to a work of art and I believe it should so. But when the images are so open that many interpretations flood in, then the reader may be happy that he has understood the work, but I’m inclined to think the artist has lost control.

Caroline published a serialized novelette, Marie Eau-Claire, on the website, The Colored Lens. She also published the story Gustav Pavel, a parable about ordinary lives, choice and alternate potential, on the website Fixional.co.